(1927 - 1991) |
These poems are posted here with permission of Marty Jerome (Mrs. Judson Jerome),
who now holds all copyrights to Jud's writings. Marty graciously told me I could put any,
and as many, of Jud's poems on the Web as I wished. These poems (except for "Its Own
Reward") were included in the collection Thirty Years of Poetry 1949-1979, published by
the late David Yates at Cedar Rock Press (now defunct). "Its Own Reward" appeared in
Jud's pamphlet Myrtle Whimple's Sampler, (Sticks Press/Trunk Press 1977).
Asterisks indicate poems that Jud preferred (as he noted in the Table of Contents of the
above-mentioned collection). Some that he apparently did not "prefer" are among those
that I most strongly cherish and enjoy. I have tried to strike a balance between his
favorites and mine.
I believe this is the only extensive site on the Web for the poetry of Judson Jerome,
one of the very finest American poets of the Twentieth Century.
Hayes Walker
July 2001
Click a title to select an individual poem.
Scroll down to read all the poems.
Deer Hunt* Six poems from: Instructions for Acting
Imitation of Nature Improvisation
Negative* Drunk Scene*
Cages* Sally Gives In Gracefully*
At the Dancing School of the Sisters Schwarz* Fool and Clown*
Departure Sally as Cleopatra
The Ocean's Warning to the Skin Diver* Nightcap*
The Muse and I
Poetry Editor as Miss Lonelyhearts Three from: Myrtle Whimple's Sampler
In the Faculty Lounge A Daddy's Love
The Bargain
Its Own Reward
Cultural Relativity Guardian of the Highway*
To My Reluctant Students of Poetry
Elegy for a Professor of Milton Four from: Homage to Shakespeare
Flight by Instruments* Sonnet 18
Loving My Enemies* Sonnet 22
The Peddler Sonnet 128
Not Even a Bridge* Sonnet 138
Uncle Ed
On Mountain Fork*
Bells for John Crowe Ransom
Gull at Play
Because the warden is a cousin, my
mountain friends hunt in summer, when the deer
cherish each rattler-ridden spring, and I
have waited hours by a pool in fear
that manhood would require I shoot, or that
the steady drip of the hill would dull my ear
to a snake whispering near the log I sat
upon, and listened to the yelping cheer
of dogs and men resounding ridge to ridge.
I flinched at every lonely rifle crack,
my knuckles whitening where I gripped the edge
of age and clung, like retching, sinking back,
then gripping once again the monstrous gun,
since I, to be a man, had taken one.
This soap ad shows, for no clear reason, birds
with geometric beaks and glad round eyes
sitting in nests floating in scalloped skies,
singing what seem to be mostly fifths and thirds
(as indicated by the arching staves
that imprint music on the air).
So bright
the tree, the birds, the blowing sheets so white,
so slick the page, so true the pledge that saves
scrubbing and money for all who buy the box
containing sunshine, that one trusts to art:
he knows life is illusion, that the part
of him concerned with toil and dirty socks
and ragged boughs and nests without a song
and warm, small, frightened hearts
is simply wrong.
I have lost the print, but in this negative
you can see her shape, if not much more. That black
is beach. Her hair, here white, was black. That white
is water, laced with black. Its roar and that
of the wind (not pictured here, except as her hair
flies out from her grey shoulders--they were brown)
drowned all our conversation. We lost track
that sun-bleached day (the sun here makes her frown)
of hours, words, kisses, sandwiches and beer,
all used in colorful affirmative.
We left our imprint on the sand. The sea
or wind in another season cleaned this away,
and now all black and white in each our minds
remains some blurry dent of how we lay,
some negative of warmth of other lips,
some scrape of sandy thighs, some taste of salt.
I forget now how it was, but how it ends
is negative, the afterglow of a glimpse,
turned inside out, unfleshed, with strength for fault,
remembered in the nerves transparently.
First I was burst. My rib
(or wife) next swelled with life
which split her. Thus a daughter
we contained safe in a crib.
The crib grew small: like a rick
of blankets, dolls, its slender
slats burgeoned, burst before
the girl was three--a quick
climber and kicker, she,
who rocked crib like a carton
and made us fear her falling;
of crib we set her free--
gave her a bed with bars
halfway. She could climb out
safely and in dark scout
for the door, come to the stairs,
where we had put a gate
to prevent her tumbling, half
sleeping, on down. The self
seems slow to save its pate.
Parents hypothesize
a girl's falls patiently.
Now she hates sleep, would
lie down never if her eyes
like cage doors never closed
her in, always at terminal
of tether like an animal.
Tonight, when I supposed
she slept, I heard a faint
scraping upstairs in the hall.
I went, and nearly fell
across her, trapped, and saint-
ly stretched on the hard floor,
arms like parentheses
around her head, her nose
making a miniature snore.
I carried her, moist and warm,
to my idea of comfort,
kissed her, left her under
covers: asserted the norm.
Asserted my love, that just
and outer cage, which she
will come to, certainly,
as sleepless daughters must,
in rage. The young must wage
hate on all bars. All bars
must be shaken, must be dared.
Fathers must bear the rage.
And she, at dawn, like fate,
will toddle to our bed, plead
that Papa wake. Indeed,
no love is sweeter than this hate,
nor hate so hard as age:
Dear child with touching hands,
night, day, age, youth, our veins,
our very ribs are cage.
AT THE DANCING SCHOOL OF THE SISTERS SCHWARZ*
Silently grave as voyeurs in a powder room,
we fathers sit with coats folded on knees
this visiting day, watching Miss Hermene
teach fourteen girls the elements of ballet.
Accompaniment is struck in chords upon
the Steinway grand. Outside a siren grieves:
law for a speeder below. Miss Hermene slaps
time on her thighs, her words exact and low.
Her muscular, liquid arms demonstrate grace
to daughters in pink tights along the bar.
Battement tendu! and fourteen arches curve.
She spots a limp leg, squats for a better view,
then sweeps from child to child, chin high, commanding--
love in her old eyes, discip1ine on her tongue,
correct as a queen, and fierce beneath her charm.
Our girls come hushed and quick, hair back, nails clean;
chubby or bony, concave or convex of chest,
gangly, petite or tough, their slippers whisper
in the studio. No scratching or wriggling now,
but each projects life to her pointed toe.
My own, the smallest, still sticks out her tummy,
curving her limber spine. Her feet are flat,
her limbs thin. Braids swing as she takes correction
like kisses--with freckly cheeks and toothy grin.
Material comes raw, but Miss Hermene
makes girlflesh pirouette and count strict time.
covertly I squirm--loosely sitting, like nature,
thinking how daffodils look to a worm.
Glissez! Sautez! Pliez! Knees skinned at skating
now bend in diamond shapes around the room,
and fathers dream of the stage where ballerinas
are purer than people, selfless, without age,
and Miss Hermene in her Ohio winter
dreams rigorous designs for the new day
and tender swarm: the power of grace, the truth
of timing, the immortality of form.
DEPARTURE
(for Basil Pillard, 1897-1956)
My errand was to drive him to the train.
He left (forgiving as the sun) the June
ignorant loves, extravagant green, and rode
human by human with me in the car.
Words, our intriguing spiders, we held fondly
in distrust. Facts spoke: The train was simply there,
seething like a planet stopped in space,
his seat reserved, his briefcase full of such
preoccupying things a soul might want
at night, or when eternal countryside
made looking outward dull. The acrid air
of the depot made us hope that progress might
not be to be regretted, and urgency honked
around us in the street. That street I had
to traffic in, but he would touch it crossing
as one steps lightly on a stone, mindful
only of what he takes to be a shore.
What words for now? Those creatures squatted dark
and anxious in webs back in our brains. We smiled
assurance that when we were whirled away
we would remain as real as now, although
worlds spun so fast (the universe expands),
and I was fortunate to feel at last
his eyes engage mine like extended hands.
All this was wordless: nor speak of the felt truth,
nor the blast of vacancy in the train's wake,
nor the departure of the iron mechanical
indifferently bearing its burden, groaning its orbit,
nor its exhaustive pulse or wail, but there
feel firm engagement of eyes--across the air.
THE OCEAN'S WARNING TO THE SKIN DIVER*
Bored, darling, with my public play of green?
You say you have seen that belly dance before?
Tired of my puffs and spangles, liquid shoulder
bare in the moonlight? You ask if there is more?
Oh, I have seen you drink away the hours
watching my grinding can-can down the bar.
I know the signs: You are rich and over thirty.
Liquor has lost its kicks, like your fast car,
like life in air, like habitats of mammals
(those fat expatriates, their blood salt sea)
and now you fit your feet with primal flippers
and, trailing bubbles, gravitate to me.
Yes, I have thrills of silence and of shadows,
a million eyes and whips for appetite,
all tentacles and lips and blue recesses,
until, entranced, you drift beneath the light
into the oldest water and the darkest,
where thumps the music of a whirligig.
Swimmer, do not pursue my coldblood heartbeat.
You slip from fun to love, whose crush is big.
THE MUSE AND I
(1958)
She shuddered down her violet lids
suggesting that I write for kids
or syndicate a daily sonnet. Worse
I might take up sex and write free verse
to make an undergraduate hit
with girls who, in the drugstore, sit
and blot enormous lips on tissues,
talk atheism and other issues,
and spend long afternoons debating
which Poet is most fascinating.
My muse said if I learned the tricks
I might aspire to write for slicks
those quatrains which find their repose
in boxes in the midst of prose.
"In fact," she said, "without much trouble, you
might lecture for A.A.U.W.
on poetry of health and cheer,
recite, and sniff your boutonniere."
"Horrors," I cried. "I want to be
a serious poet--who writes for free
(except for an occasional corker
fit for Atlantic or the New Yorker).
I am an artist with my eyes
on the N.B.A. and the Nobel Prize.
I want to be revered, not paid,
for sixty pages a decade.
I want to string a metric fence
around a pure experience
and catch the trauma of my times
in broken phrases, dissonant rhymes
and images that split the sun,
thoughts seen in a stereopticon,
appearing deeper than they are,
or kaleidoscopic as a star
with shifting bits of ambiguity,
intriguing for a perpetuity . . . "
"Can it," she said. "You think that you
can ever attain the cosmic view,
the voice with timbre, or procure
an academic sinecure?"
"I must," I said. "Consider: I'm
applying for a Guggenheim!"
"Well, if your collar is not dirty,
you're true to your wife and over thirty
(so won't be 'younger' many more years),
have hair cut well above your ears,
and students call you 'good old guy,'
I guess you roughly qualify.
Now, first, collect a coterie . . ."
"Wait! I want to write poetry!"
Don't interrupt. I'm teaching you.
There are several things you have to do:
Make anti-scientific taunts,
and hail a West Coast Renaissance,
but court the Kenyon-Sewanee axis
with poetry that bores, relaxes;
warble a colorless coloratura,
memorize every Botteghe Oscure . . ."
"I want to write! I've got the call!"
"Oh, son, write seldom, if at all.
But, if you must, all sense disjoint:
Poetry must not have a point.
And break the iamb, lose the beat;
a sense of rhythm means defeat.
Abuse the public's brain and ear,
and learn this motto: Be not clear.
Rare language is your diadem,
and words are blossoms: Rest on them
like a butterfly and aspirate,
for sentences are out of date.
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